'Crazy Love' to Magnolia in festival's first big deal

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PARK CITY -- Magnolia Pictures nailed a deal late Saturday for North American rights to "Crazy Love," director Dan Klores' provocative documentary about a couple who marries some 16 years after the man has acid thrown in his future wife's face.

In the first theatrical deal of the Sundance festival, Magnolia bought domestic rights Saturday afternoon for mid-six figures. Klores retains international, TV and remake rights to the docu.

Klores and his producing partner Fisher Stevens took the chance of pre-screening the film before the festival, a risky decision that could have backfired dependent on how the film played. But according to Fisher, they thought they had the goods. "It was Dan's idea to go early and I agreed," said Stevens.

Klores, a native New Yorker, remembers reading about the seminal incident in Linda and Burt Pugach's lives, when Pugacah had his fiance blinded because he thought he was losing her to another man. But it wasn't until Klores read a New York Times story about the couple who reconnected after Pugach's 16-year jail sentence and wound up marrying each other that he decided to pursue the project.